Motorists would be unlikely to use a road link across a future Severn barrage unless it were toll-free or the cost was low enough to compete with the Severn bridges, it has been warned.

Artists impression of the Corlan Hafren proposal for the Severn Barrage

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Motorists would be unlikely to use a road link across a future Severn barrage unless it were toll-free or the cost was low enough to compete with the Severn bridges, it has been warned.

With the charge to use the existing Severn crossings, which rose to £6 a car on January 1, expected to come down in five years’ time, a new highway on any barrage linking Wales and England might struggle to attract enough traffic, transport industry experts have suggested.

The Welsh Affairs committee recommended in December that the bridge toll could be as low as £1.50 in 2017 if, as expected, ownership switches from Severn River Crossing Plc to the state.

Ian Gallagher, policy manager for Wales at the Freight Transport Association, said: “We’ll have a situation where the existing bridge is paid off so there should be a reduction in the existing toll charge.”

He pointed out that there could then be three road links across the Severn and drivers would have to look at the comparative prices of fuel and tolls.

The AA said any calculations about charging for a new road link would depend on drivers’ willingness to pay tolls and the future cost of fuel.

“Do drivers trust the concept of paying for a project by toll? That will hinge on whether the Severn bridge tolls continue,” said a spokesman, who added: “Will drivers find driving less affordable than now? In that case, calculations about income might come unstuck unless you build in sufficient wriggle room.”

A Severn barrage returned to the agenda last month when WalesOnline revealed that the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has received a submission for a new privately-funded scheme and has asked the consortium behind it – Corlan Hafren – to provide further details.

The new undisclosed plans for a multi-billion-pound barrage across the Severn Estuary remain under consideration from the UK Government.

Although a road link has not been confirmed, the consortium says building a barrage provides the opportunity to build new road and rail links between South Wales and south-west England. Tolls would help pay for the construction and the new transport links would help cut journey times within a combined city region containing more than 2.2 million people.

Professor Stuart Cole, a leading transport expert based at the University of Glamorgan, said yesterday that if in 2017 state ownership of the bridges passed to the Welsh Government, he could see a scenario where their tolls would be reduced to £1 a car or even to zero, as the WG could pay the estimated £18m-a-year maintenance grants from its own budgets in a bid to boost Wales’ economy and tourism.

But if the Department of Transport wanted to keep hold of the £80m-a-year revenue the bridges currently generate, it could take charge of the bridges and their tolls could remain at a higher level, he said.

He also forecast a position where the barrage’s investors could take over control of the bridges to ensure the tolls for all three were the same.

Prof Cole said: “The same thing is going to happened as happened with the Second Seven Crossing, where the first crossing was handed over to them because obviously if one bridge had been free and the other tolled, people would have used the old bridge... and you do not want that.

“Does the barrage take over the bridges and keep the tolls on the bridges as well? The barrage investors would not want an untolled bridge or a bridge at a lower toll. Logic says that based on past experience that the barrage’s investors would have to take over the two bridges as well and continue to charge on those as well.”

In a document published in October 2010 Corlan Hafren said a barrage roadway would be required for maintenance access and that “appropriate planning and design would leave the door open for future development toward a main highway to support the foreseeable development of the region”.

Whether such a road would be built privately or with public money would have to be worked out along with any decisions about possible charging. The possibility of a road or rail link was looked at during the feasibility study into previous Severn barrage proposals, which ended in 2010.

A study by the Highways Agency in 2008 concluded that the amount of traffic that would use a Cardiff-Weston barrage would not be enough to bring tolls within affordable levels.

A study by Network Rail at the same time said “there appears to be no significant rail benefits” in adding a rail link along a Cardiff-Weston route.

However if Port Talbot was developed as a major deepwater port bringing in ultra large container ships there could be much greater demand for a new rail and road link.

Similarly regional development following a barrage project might increase commuter traffic using a link.

Robert Lloyd Griffiths, Wales director of the Institute of Directors, said: “The M4 at Newport is a bottleneck and it seems that rail electrification is only going as far as Cardiff – although we’d like to see it go at least as far as Swansea – so new ideas on infrastructure are very welcome.”